How Paid Family and Medical Leave Impacts Working Mothers

By Nicole Rodriguez, September 13, 2017

How-Paid-Family-and-Medical-Leave-Impacts-Working-Mothers

While most parents welcoming new family members face
challenging
decisions about balancing caregiving responsibilities with their
careers, mothers tend to bear the heavier load.1
For instance,
women are more likely than men to take time out of the labor force to
have children and work fewer hours to take care of them and other
family members.2
This can impact the economic security of
families especially since many families rely on mothers’
incomes. In over two-fifths of families with children in the U.S. (41.4
percent), mothers are the primary wage earners as either a single
parent or as a co-primary wage earner, bringing home as much or more
than their partner.3
Paid family and medical leave (PFML)
provides workers with job protections, partial wage replacement, and
flexibility to meet family responsibilities. Several states and most
other countries have PFML policies that aim to help families, and
ultimately the economy, by making it easier for working people to bond
with a new child, attend to their own serious medical needs, or care
for an ill family member.

Paid family and medical leave and its effects on women’s
labor force attachment

In New England, a small percentage of workers – 13
percent
– receive paid family leave through their employer, which
lets them take care of new babies, newly-adopted children, or seriously
ill family members.4
However, a few U.S. states have PFML
programs that serve virtually all employers and employees. With the
longest-standing and best-documented PFML program in the nation,
California provides the best evidence on how paid leave programs affect
working mothers. For instance, one research study shows that after the
PFML law was implemented in California, mothers employed at least 20
weeks during pregnancy and mothers employed at some point during their
pregnancy are 18 percent and 13 percent more likely, respectively, of
returning to work within a year after birth compared to preprogram
baselines (see below).5

While the first bar the bar shows the experience of women
employed for
least 20 weeks, the second bar broadens the sample to include mothers
with any pre-birth employment. As for the latter, the study explains
that these results shows a smaller probability of returning to work
because fewer mothers would be eligible for leave than mothers would
with more robust and consistent work histories.67

In addition to making it more likely for new mothers to return
to the
labor force, data indicate that PFML makes it more likely for new
mothers to stay in the labor force. In the same study as discussed
above, in California, before the law, mothers, with at least 20 weeks
of work experience during pregnancy, worked about 39 weeks in the
second year after a child’s birth. After the law came into
effect, this increased to 46 weeks, an overall 7 week increase in that
year.8
Mothers with any work experience are more likely to
experience a 5 week growth in weeks worked in the second year after
birth.9

PFML and duration of maternal leave taking

The length of leave matters when increased employment is the
preferred
result. When parental leaves are too short or are too long, there can
be negative maternal employment effects.10
Several studies
indicate that maternity leave lasting a few months have the most
positive impact on maternal employment.1112 For
instance, a longitudinal study of European paid leave programs showed
that paid parental leave of three months increased the percent of women
employed by 3 to 4 percent when compared to corresponding aged men and
older women.13

While those caregivers who take leave are out of the workforce in the
short term, they are more likely to return to work and remain employed
than those without access to PFML.14
For instance, research
from European paid family leave programs finds that paid family leave
insurance programs that provide a few months of paid parental leave can
improve women’s labor force participation.15
Currently, many women in the U.S. have only a few weeks of paid
maternity leave, if employer provided or provided through a state
insurance program, or none at all.

Research shows, for instance, that in California, prior to
implementation of its PFML law, mothers took around 3 weeks of paid
family leave (particularly bonding leave).16
After the program
was enacted, use of paid family leave increased to 6 or 7 weeks, on
average, as shown below.17
This increase in leave taking makes
it easier for working mothers to follow medical recommendations that
all women undergo a comprehensive postpartum visit around the first 6
weeks after delivery in order to receive anticipatory guidance around
returning to work, among other things.18

In addition to the obstacles that most women face in taking leave, the
data suggest that Black women are often even less likely to be able to
take adequate leave than White women. The California study found that
before the PFML law Black women averaged just one week of maternity
leave compared with 4 weeks taken by non-Hispanic White
mothers.19
Several years after implementation, both groups
averaged seven weeks of leave.

PFML and impact on low- and
moderate-income mothers

Access to paid family leave is limited across the income
spectrum.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 6 percent in the
lowest wage quarter of workers have access to paid family leave, 12
percent in the second quarter, and 15 percent in the third quarter (see
below).2021

Increasing access to paid family leave policies can help
mitigate
financial hardships that can come with child birth. One study finds
that U.S. households face on average a 10 percent drop in income
relative to pre-pregnancy, and single mothers face a significantly
larger drop in household income – 42 percent –
relative to pre-pregnancy.22
Furthermore, families who took
unpaid leave after childbirth reported using multiple strategies to pay
their bills, including using savings, taking on debt, cutting leave
short, postponing bill payment, relying on friends and family for
financial support, and going on public assistance.23

The risk of financial hardship can be particularly acute on women, who
are more likely to be primary caretakers,24
and whose growing
economic contributions play an important role in their
families’ economic stability.25
Overall, the
percentage of working mothers who are primary wage earners or who earn
as much as their partners has more than tripled since 1967.26
Even in recent years, this percentage has increased from 30.2 percent
in 2007 to 36.5 percent in 2010.27

PFML and effects on the gender wage gap

The persistent wage differences by gender partly reflect the
impact of
motherhood on women’s careers. New mothers tend to have to
drop from the labor force for periods of time to take care of their
children, facing setbacks in their accumulated earnings. Setbacks can
be even more substantial when there is no access to paid family leave
policies. As explored above, access to paid family leave increases the
likelihood that women return to and stay in the labor force after
childbirth. It also helps new mothers maintain a level of wages that
they would not have otherwise earned. For instance, new mothers in
California saw a 24 percent increase in mean annual wages in the first
year of their child’s life, and 23 percent during the second
year of their child’s life, when comparing pre- and post-paid
family leave law wage outcomes.28

6Workers’
earnings determine eligibility for the
California paid family leave program. Specifically, eligibility
requires that a worker earn at least $300 from which the state
disability insurance deductions were withheld during their base period.
For more on eligibility, see here:
http://www.edd.ca.gov/Disability/Am_I_Eligible_for_PFL_Benefits.htm

11While
the lack of adequate leave can negatively impact
maternal employment, research finds that very long leaves can also have
negative employment effects. For instance, a study of 21 European
countries found that maternity leaves of 24 weeks or more can bring
negative effects on mothers’ labor force participation. The
evidence does not suggest any similar effect of long medical leaves. In
fact, data on specific medical conditions shows longer leaves can be
important. For example, a study of women with breast cancer found that
they needed about 6 months of leave to deal with diagnosis. For more
see: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1216317/

20While
there is somewhat more access to unpaid leave than
paid leave, access to unpaid leave is also limited. For instance, the
federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) provides up to 12 weeks of
unpaid and job-protected leave to eligible workers to deal with serious
health conditions or the birth, adoption, or foster care of a child. It
requires that employees work close to full-time and for large employers
(companies with 50 or more workers). As a result of these limitations,
about 40 percent of the workforce is not covered by the FMLA. In
Massachusetts, less than half of working parents in Massachusetts are
both eligible for and could afford to take unpaid leave.